


Between the Shores

by IRememberThereWasMist47 (Prixin47)



Category: Love Never Dies - Lloyd Webber, Phantom of the Opera - Lloyd Webber
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-06
Updated: 2021-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-19 08:15:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29871768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prixin47/pseuds/IRememberThereWasMist47
Summary: Alternate ending toWe Said Things in the Dark: Christine awakes before the Phantom on the roof of the Opera House after the events of "Beneath a Moonless Sky."
Relationships: Christine Daaé/Erik | Phantom of the Opera, Madame Giry & Meg Giry, Raoul de Chagny/Christine Daaé
Comments: 9
Kudos: 22





	Between the Shores

His face was nestled into her bosom, her body shielding his eyes from the blush of dawn that woke her. Tears sprang to her eyes at the soft melody that played in her mind as she felt his skin on hers, his powerful body now fully at rest in her arms. 

She did not know the breadth of the suffering he had endured in his life before her, but she knew it must have been tremendous to cause the anguish that so often overcame him. She wished she could hold him like this forever and let him rest in warmth and safety.

Too soon, dawn was fully upon them and he stirred.

“Good morning,” she whispered, smiling and brushing the tears from her eyes.

He tensed at once and clutched at his face, casting about for his mask. When he did not find it close at hand, he leapt from the pallet and ran, fully naked, across the rooftop to retrieve it.

Christine’s first impulse was to laugh, not out of cruelty, but because he was so ridiculous: running around naked, desperate to cover his face. Did he truly believe that she would be shocked by what she had already seen, already touched, already chosen with her entire being?

But of course, he did believe that. He had spent his whole life believing it, and he was not soon likely to change.

She rose and walked towards him, wrapped in the rough little blanket that had sheltered them both all night. 

“My love,” she said, as she came nearer to where he crouched pulling the mask over his face. “Please.”

He did not respond. His body was trembling so intensely that at first she thought he was chilled by the morning air, but then she heard his ragged sobs.

She knelt and reached for him, to offer comfort, to reassure him; but he flinched and pulled away from her.

“I do not know how to help you,” she said. “Please. Tell me.”

“Go!” he said. “Go and leave me! I don’t want you to see. I can’t let you see.”

“And what if I don’t want to go?” she demanded. “What if I want to stay here with you, on this rooftop, and spend the entire day doing what we did all night last night?”

“You could not see me last night.”

“But I have seen you, and as it happens, I want to keep seeing you.”

“You do?” His voice sounded so small and sad, almost childlike.

“Yes!” she said, standing again and throwing her arms in the air in frustration. “I am permitted to make that choice for myself, am I not?”

He looked up at her then. “You were crying. You regretted…”

“No!” she said, now understanding. “I was crying because I was so moved by holding you. You looked so… so sweet.” 

He turned and knelt before her and she came towards him, reaching for his mask.

“May I?” she asked, and he cast his eyes down and nodded. She removed his mask and ran her fingers once again over the twisted flesh that was already becoming familiar to her.

He rested his face against her belly and, just as before, she heard a swell of music - soft strings playing far in the distance.

They stayed like that for several minutes until at last she spoke.

“You may have a mask for every occasion,” she said, “save for when we are alone together. I want nothing between us. I’ve decided.”

He looked up into her eyes now, speechless for perhaps the first time in his life. He stood and put his arms around her, holding her head to his chest as he had the night before, unable to find any response that was fit for purpose.

She began to hum softly, a melody that was both entirely new and yet somehow familiar to them both. He answered her in harmony, a wordless little tune that danced across the rooftop as the sun began to warm them.

“Come back to bed,” she said, discarding the mask and leading him by the hand back across the rooftop to the little pallet.

They spent the entire day there, discovering every way there was to entwine their bodies, sleeping in each other’s arms, and humming melodies together, each easily anticipating the other’s choice of rhythm, melody, and harmony.

Near dusk, they laughed in astonishment when they changed keys simultaneously, seamlessly, as though the music had already been scored and rehearsed.

“The Phantom of the Opera is here,” she said, grinning at him. “Inside my mind.”

“So it would seem,” he replied.

“I heard that this sort of thing happens between musicians who have played together for many years,” she said, “but I have never heard talk of anything like this.”

“But we have played together for many years,” he replied. “Even before I knew your name. Before I loved you. Before you were old enough for me to love like… like this.”

“I suppose we have,” she replied, a little uneasily. “When did it? When did your feelings change?”

“I was hiding, watching over rehearsals as I always did. The corps de ballet was beginning to learn Madame Giry’s choreography for Chalumeau’s Hannibal and I was struck by your beauty. I spent several days wondering who you were and where you had come from before I heard you and the other girls rehearsing your choral parts with Monsieur Reyer and realized.

From then on, nothing could quench my ardor for you. When you came to the wings in the darkness, to sing with me, it was all I could do not to come down from my hiding place and touch you.”

“What stopped you?” she asked, wishing that he had simply come forward and declared himself. It would have spared them all so much anguish, and so much death.

“I thought you were still too young,” he replied, “and of course I was ashamed of… of this,” he gestured to his face.

“That first day of rehearsals was my birthday,” she said. “I was twenty-two and decidedly old enough, so put that out of your mind.”

“And how did you celebrate?” he asked, delighted to be past this potentially thorny subject.

“Meg and some of the other dancers surprised me with petit fours from the patisserie after rehearsal. Madame Giry was furious when she found out. She always was very strict about what we ate.”

At the mention of Madame Giry, he stiffened somewhat. “Christine, there’s something I must tell you.”

~~~~~~

“Christine, where have you been?” demanded Madame Giry when Christine entered her rooms at the boarding house a few hours later. “The Vicomte has visited twice and sent nearly a dozen notes. He’ll have half the city out looking for you by now.”

“I will answer him shortly, I assure you,” replied Christine. “But now, the four of us need to have a conversation.”

“The four of us?” asked Meg, emerging from their sleeping quarters with a knowing grin.

“The four of us,” came a baritone voice from the shadows by the window.

Madame Giry looked to Meg. “Do you see now what you have done? You silly girl!”

“What she has done,” Christine said, forcefully, “is reunite two people who love each other.”

Madame Giry sat and poured herself a glass of wine.

“And is Miss Daaé to join us in America?” she asked pointedly.

“Whether or not _we_ join you in America is very much up to Christine,” he said.

“It depends upon one thing,” Christine said, fixing the old woman with a piercing gaze. “You must swear to me that from this moment forward, you will not keep anything from me that concerns me. No more secrets. No more subterfuge. No more lies. I understand why all that was necessary before, but that chapter of our lives is over now.”

“Do you agree to Christine’s terms?” he asked.

Giry bowed her head for a moment and, when she looked back up at Christine, she was the very picture of contrition. “You are right Christine. You are not a child anymore and you have made your choice. I swear it.”

Christine could not be certain the old woman was entirely sincere, but she had drawn the line and that was enough for now. “So,” she asked, taking a seat and helping herself to the wine, “when do we leave?”

“We leave for Calais tomorrow at dawn,” replied Madame Giry. “You have but a few hours to put your affairs in order.”

Christine turned to her lover, the glass of wine forgotten. “I must speak to Raoul.”

“Go,” he said, “I will prepare your belongings.”

“Go, Christine,” said Meg. “I’ll show him to your room.”

~~~~~

“Him?” asked Raoul, his eyes wide. “Surely this must be a joke! Christine. Tell me this is some obscene jest.”

“Things have changed, Raoul,” she said simply. “I did not truly understand how I felt until last night. He is disfigured, yes, but I love him.”

“His disfigurement is not what concerns me,” Raoul spat, “though how you could touch someone so foul is beyond me. It is the fact that he is a murderer that concerns me most primarily! Or did you not think what kind of man it was whose bed you shared last night?”

Christine thought then of Buquet and Piangi, both good men who had not deserved their grim fates. She wondered whether those were his first murders and realized that of course, there were likely others. She had always known that he was dangerous, that there was a distortion in his soul, in these fits of rage and anguish and shame that overcame him. 

Doubts tugged at her mind but to Raoul she simply said, “I know who he is. I do not love him because he is good, Raoul. I just love him.”

“Christine, it is not too late to make this right,” Raoul pleaded. “I will pay no mind to what you did last night. You could have been with a thousand men for all I care. We can wake the priest this very hour and be wed. What can he offer you that compares with all of this?” and he waved his arms about the lavish room.

“Music,” she said. “He can offer me music.”

~~~~

Christine was terribly seasick the morning they set sail, but when she did not find her sea legs after a few days, Madame Giry came and sat with her.

“Christine,” she asked gently as the lovely girl lay on the lower bunk in their cabin, heaving into a bucket, pallid and sweating, “have you and the Master been… together? Do you understand what I mean?”

Christine nodded before retching again.

“And have your courses come this month?”

“No,” Christine said, already knowing the old woman’s meaning. “They should have begun a few days ago.”

“Then you are almost certainly with child,” said Madame Giry simply. “Seasickness does not come in the morning and go in the afternoon, Christine.”

Christine gave no answer, but heaved again into the bucket.

“You poor thing,” Madame Giry clucked, stroking her hair gently. She was still a bit resentful at having been caught meddling and called on the carpet by a girl she had all but raised, but things were as they were and there was no use in dwelling on the matter any further. “We shall have to arrange a wedding at once.”

“Let me tell him,” Christine said, before retching again. “It usually abates in the evening. Let me go to him then.”

~~~~

That evening, Christine rinsed out her mouth, wiped herself down thoroughly with a clean rag, and dressed herself simply.

“I do not know his name,” Christine murmured to herself as she crossed below decks to her lover’s cabin. She had been so accustomed to thinking of him as the Angel of Music or simply as “him,” but she could not very well make vows to an angel, nor could she take an unknown name as her own.

She knocked on the door and waited. After several seconds, his answer came, a little weakly. “Madame Giry?”

“No,” she said, “may I come in my love?”

The door opened a crack and she entered his cabin, pitch dark and musty.

“You have not come to see me,” he said, “I thought perhaps you had changed your mind.”

“No, my love. I have been ill for several days.”

“It was just the same for me when I was first aboard a ship, many years ago.”

“Perhaps not just the same,” she said. “Will you light the lamp? We need to have a rather serious conversation and I would like to be able to see you while we do.”

There was a moment, then the strike of a match and the sputter of a lamp coming to life. She looked into his haunted eyes and realized that he truly had been afraid she’d abandoned him. 

She came to sit beside him on the bed and took his hand in hers reassuringly.

“Do you know how a woman comes to be with child?” she asked him gently.

“Nobody ever thought to speak of me of such things,” he said, “but I’ve heard enough in passing to understand that it has something to do with,” he drew closer to her and brushed his lips to her ear, his voice a tantalizing hiss, “with what we did on the rooftop.”

She trembled at his breath on her neck and whispered back to him, “that’s right. That’s exactly how.”

He drew back and his eyes grew round as he began to sense her meaning. “Then you… Christine. You...” He slid off the bed and onto the floor, on both knees in front of her.

“A child… our child… Christine.” He kissed her hands and leaned his forehead against her knees.

“It is a great deal to take in,” she said, “do you… are you pleased by this?”

“We can teach him music,” he said, looking up with a wild excitement she had never seen from him before. “And how to build things.”

“Or her,” said Christine. “We might have a daughter.”

“Well then we can teach _her_ music,” he said, “and how to build things.” 

And then he paused, “are you… are you pleased by this?”

“I am a bit,” she searched for a word that would not offend him, “surprised. I knew that being together as we have been could result in a child but I had no idea how easily it could happen. I am still taking it in. 

“But,” she added quickly, “I imagined that a child might someday come into our lives. It may as well be now.”

“Then it is settled,” he said, popping back up onto the bed enthusiastically, “how long must we wait?”

“There is more for us to discuss first, darling,” she said, smiling at his bizarre combination of worldliness and innocence. In some ways, he was still very much a child himself. “When we land in America, it would be better if nobody knew that our child was conceived out of wedlock.”

He turned then and rummaged through the trunk at the foot of his cot before producing the ring he had given her the night of the fire, the ring she had so gently returned to him before departing with Raoul.

“Christine,” he said, kneeling in front of her again, “will you…? Please, will you be my wife?”

“Yes,” she replied, “of course. But... I must know who I am marrying.”

He turned from her then. “There are things it would be best for you never to know.”

Christine sighed, exasperated. “We have been over this. I have chosen you. I am on a ship bound for a new country with you. I am carrying your child. I would not be able to change my mind even if I wanted to.”

He was silent for a long time before she spoke again. “At least tell me your name,” she pleaded. “I love you with everything I am, yet I do not know your name.”

Another pause. Longer this time.

“Erik,” he finally said.

“Erik,” she whispered, scooting towards him on his bunk and placing a tender hand on his shoulder. “Erik, please look at me.”

He stood and paced the room. His fingers began to dance in the air around him.

“Darling, where are you?” she said with growing confusion and alarm. “Where did you go just now?”

He shook his head and continued pacing, his hands moving wildly.

She was at an absolute loss for several minutes, but she reasoned that if she remained with him, perhaps he would come out of it.

More minutes went by and she began to hum softly to herself, making up a little melody as she went. He stopped pacing and looked at her.

She went on humming and laid her hand on the bunk next to her, patting it as if to say, “come and sit with me.”

He sat next to her then and she placed her arm around his shoulders, still humming to him.

In time, he began humming with her, anticipating her, making the music that always swelled between them when they were together. They sat like that for what felt to her like hours before the music reached a natural resting point.

He took a breath and met her eyes ever so briefly.

“Those... those fits come over me sometimes when I, when there is too much light or movement or noise, or when… when something reminds me of the past.”

“What does it feel like?”

“It feels like I am trapped behind my own eyes. Like everything is too tight and dry and bright and barren and I cannot escape it. And I know with certainty that I am hideous. Horrible. Beneath contempt. That I should not exist at all. I feel as though I will die. The only thing that seems to help is walking about like that. I wish you had not seen me behave so oddly. Most people find it quite unsettling.”

“If it is what you must do to calm yourself then there is no harm in it,” she said. “There is no part of you I do not want to see.”

“Be that as it may, Christine, I beg you. Do not ask me to talk about the past again.”

“I cannot promise that,” she replied, as kindly as she could manage. “Your past is clearly very much with you, and if we are to have a life together all that is yours will naturally become mine over time.”

He did not reply, nor did he look at her again, but nodded in understanding.

“We need not discuss it further today, save one small thing.”

“What is it?”

“When we marry, I will take your surname, will I not?”

“I had not thought of this,” he said, a little flabbergasted to have overlooked something so obvious. “I have no surname to give you. I never knew who my father was and my mother, she...” he trailed off, unable to finish.

She was taken aback by this new information, both the fact that had shared it at all and what it implied. Her mind brimmed with questions, but she had promised him that she would not inquire further about his past today, so instead she said, “then we shall both take a new name together. A new name for a new life.”

He began listing composers almost at once. She did not like “de La Guerre.” (“I don’t want to think of war every time I say my name.”) And he was not fond of her suggestion of “Clérambault.” (“Think of how it will sound when you say my whole name.”)

When they found one that suited them both, they returned to the women’s quarters together.

“I believe,” said Christine with a smile as bright as any Madame Giry had ever seen across her face, “that we are in need of the ship’s captain.”

~~~~~

A few days later, Mr. and Mrs. Du Fay, a respectable pair of Parisian newlyweds, disembarked into the bustle of New York with their companions and made their way into a new life.

**Author's Note:**

> As an autistic myself, I have long head-cannoned the Phantom as autistic. His synesthesias and special interests. His struggles with cognitive empathy and social connection. His trauma which, let's be clear, has got to go deeper than just being rejected for being ugly. Had he been a socially adept guy in a mask, life might not have been quite so cruel.
> 
> This was also a good opportunity to give Christine some more agency. She gets to have a say in her own life at long last, and things go better for everyone because of it.


End file.
